came near the strip of animal hide. A blow from the strip was supposed to render a woman fertile. During the festival, the men would randomly draw the name of a woman from a jar to be coupled up with during Lupercalia. Some couples stayed together until the following Lupercalia. Many others fell in love and married.
The Christian church banned participation in the festival in 494 A.D. Tradition holds that Pope Gelasius I appropriated the form of the rite as the Feast of the Purification, Candlemas, celebrated on February 2. But the Christian feast was likely established in the previous century. An alternate story suggests that the church replaced Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s Day, celebrated on February 14th, but the origin of that holiday was most likely much later.
There are multiple legends surrounding the life of Saint Valentine. The most famous is that on the 14th of February during the 3rd century A.D., a man named Valentine was executed by the Emperor Claudius II after being imprisoned for assisting persecuted Christians and secretly marrying Christian couples. During Valentine’s imprisonment he tutored a girl named Julia, the blind daughter of his jailer. After she and Valentine prayed together, God restored her sight. Later, Valentine tried to convert the emperor into a Christian. Claudius II was so furious that he told Valentine to either reject his faith or be killed. Valentine refused and the Emperor ordered his execution. The night before his execution, he wrote a letter to Julia and signed it, “From your Valentine.” The Catholic Church declared Valentine a saint and listed him in Roman Martyrology as being martyred on the 14th of February.